Geppetto's Dilemma
by mosylu
Summary: "Caitlin. I don't think of you that way." "Why not?" "Because. You're a computer." Angsty Killervibe robot AU.


Cisco found her in the cortex, her legs folded up to her chest, staring out the window. He stopped, swallowed, put his hands in his pockets. "Hey," he said.

Without looking around, Caitlin said, "You're still here?"

"You knew I was." He ran a hand through his hair, feeling horrendously guilty for no reason. "Look, I'm sorry you found out like that."

"Oh, no, I'm sorry to have intruded," she said in a somewhat high-pitched voice. "It was none of my business."

"I was going to tell you." Except he hadn't been sure how. Maybe that was why he'd let that kiss happen in full view of the perimeter sensors, even if it had been a cruel, biting kiss. He'd known she would see.

He sighed. "Go on. Let me have it."

She folded her hands in her lap and was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Hartley, Cisco? Really?"

He made a face. "It's - complicated? Like, kind of hate-sexy. But hot."

"Hartley," she said, with loathing in her voice.

"I realize it makes no sense, but it's a thing. An 'oh my god, I don't even like you, but this is So. Damn. Hot,' kind of thing." He shrugged. "I'm sure it'll all go down in flames but it'll be fun while it lasts."

She put her cheek on her knee. "I'm not sure how I missed it. We've been working together six months now. I didn't realize you were gay. I apologize."

"Nothing to apologize for, because I'm not. I've dated all genders, actually. I'm pansexual, which means I don't get hung up on stuff like who I'm supposed to like. If I'm attracted to somebody, I'm attracted, that simple."

She bit her lip. "Would I be more attractive in a male chassis?"

He thought he'd misheard. "What?"

"There are plenty in storage. Never used. If I was in one of those, would I be more appealing?"

He suppressed a shudder at the thought of all the robot bodies down in the storage room. He'd seen them only once, stacked up like mannequins on shelves, when he'd gone downstairs at Caitlin's direction to retrieve one for her.

It had been dark and quiet, except for Caitlin's voice in his earpiece. He'd grabbed a body, loaded it on the dolly, and booked it back out of the Uncanny Valley as quickly as possible, trying not to meet the chassis's blank, sightless eyes until he'd connected the cables and they'd glimmered to life.

"You're fine," he said now, petting her shoulder. "You're perfect. Why would you even ask that? I mean, if you feel more male right now, sure, switch out if you want." She'd pointed him at the female side of the storage room without any hesitation, but gender was a wacky thing sometimes. Especially for people like her. "But what do you mean, appealing?"

"To you," she said. "I want to know if one of those bodies downstairs would be more appealing to you than this one."

He blinked at her. "I - I - Caitlin. I don't think of you that way."

"Why not?" Her voice was steady, but if she'd been human, it might have shook. Maybe.

"Because. You're a computer."

She glanced at him briefly, then looked away, out the window again. "I was human once."

It was hard to read her sometimes. Dr. Wells had been revolutionary, ahead of his time, no doubt about that. But with the state of the art thirty years ago, he really hadn't been able to do much about the involuntary indicators of emotion that humans depended on. And of course, he was gone. Had been gone for two decades.

Sometimes, too, Cisco thought Caitlin had spent too time swimming around in the databanks, without a face or a body to express anything, and she'd forgotten how.

Since they'd re-opened Star Labs, repurposing it as a superhero base, she'd spent a lot of time outside of the banks, in that human-shaped chassis. It seemed like she was relearning human expression from him and Barry and Iris, but still, nobody meeting her for the first time could ever mistake that she was anything but a supercomputer using a mechanical body.

He tried to explain. "Yeah, I know that in my head, but - but your brain got backed up on disk before I was even born. I mean, conceptually, I realize that you were born, not coded, and that you lived twenty-odd years as a human before - you know - but I've never known you any other way than this. Why do you - "

She lifted her eyes to him, and suddenly, like glass shattering, he understood what she was trying to say.

"Wait. Oh, god. Wait. You - do you have feelings for me? Is that - I didn't even know that was possible."

"Those got backed up, too," she said. "The capacity for them, anyway. It's not as if Dr. Wells could pick and choose." She blinked twice, slow and measured. "It's not obvious? How I feel?"

He shook his head.

She looked away again. "It feels obvious."

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, pictures flashing in his head. Caitlin asking him to build something for her. Caitlin coming to him with some little tweak she wanted on a joint or an internal system. Caitlin ordering food for him when he was there late, always exactly what he wanted without asking. Caitlin watching movies with him, curled up on the sofa in the break room. Caitlin trying out jokes on him, for god's sake. "I had no idea - I - " He reached out to put his hand on her shoulder again.

She twitched away from his touch.

He dropped his head, feeling his throat knot. "Caitlin, you're very special to me - you're very special, period - "

"Don't," she said, getting to her feet. "Don't try to give me lollipops like a child, Cisco."

"But I mean it. You're smart and you're awfully kind, considering, and you're even funny, sometimes, lately."

"Considering," she said. "Considering that I'm nothing but electrical impulses. Not human. Not really."

He closed his eyes, feeling his own thoughtless sins stack up higher. "You know what, I can't even count up the number of times Barry and I would have crashed and burned, doing this superhero gig, if you weren't there. You're our teammate, we couldn't do this without you - "

"But you don't think of me that way," she said. "And it's becoming very clear that you never will."

"Caitlin - "

"I'm close to sixty years old. I should be able to handle rejection by now."

"I'm sorry," he said again, trying to think of anything else to say that would help. But what could he say? She was right.

She was a computer. She was bits and bytes, with the ability to dart through the information superhighway in the time it took him to flip a light switch. She could shut down this whole building in a blink. She was in every chip, every wire, of Star Labs. She used a body, but she was so much more than that. So incredibly different than him.

She shook her head. "I think I've been using this chassis too much lately," she said. "I'm going to put it away for awhile."

"Wait. You like it."

"Yes, but it's fooling me into thinking I'm real." She opened a closet and climbed up onto the tilted board inside, plugging the charger cable into the port under her ear and settling her head back. Her eyes went flat and dead, and the body she'd inhabited was just an inert mannequin again.

A moment later, the overhead speakers crackled. "I'd like you to go," Caitlin's voice said, echoing and re-echoing around the cortex.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Caitlin. Can't we talk about this?"

"I'm not angry at you, Cisco. I know that even if I were human, there would be no guarantee that you would be attracted to me or develop feelings for me. But it's very painful to know that I never had the chance. And I need to process. Isn't what humans do? They process their emotions? I need some time for that."

"I -"

The lights dimmed, except for the one over the elevator. It was her particular way of shoving him out the door. "Please. Go. I'll call you if you're needed."

FINIS


End file.
